Orlando Holiday Pet Peeves

I'm in a really moany mood about Orlando I realise, but I don't truly mean it (not really) and they're just so much fun to write! I actually made the notes for this post as I was going around the parks on our trip and just haven't gotten around to writing the damn thing until now. Anyway, as you can tell, I am an incredibly impatient person, and any slight annoyance is enough to send me into a furious rage. I'm basically Maleficent in a theme park when people are doing ridiculous things to piss me off. Fools! Imbeciles! You get the idea, I'm just a very angry person. Here's my biggest pet peeves of my Orlando holiday!

AKA the most cringeworthy thing in the entire world. Family vacation t-shirts are just terrible too, but there's nothing more vomit-inducing to me than a couple wearing 'His Belle/Her Beast' slogan t-shirts or some other such nonsense. We get it, you're a couple on holiday to Disney World. The worst are the one;s who've just gotten engaged and think they're the most original and hilarious people in the world for wearing a 'he put a ring on it!' top. Urgh, please take several seats, you're giving me a migraine. Exceptions to this are LGBTQ+ couples living their best life or if you're matching with ears - that I can get on board with. Everybody else take a good hard look at yourselves and please stop immediately.

WHY ARE YOU WEARING HARRY POTTER ROBES ON THE HAUNTED MANSION YOU UTTER CRETIN! This to me is a crime that should be punishable by death. The audacity! How do you not feel like a massive idiot, wandering around Diagon Alley sporting Minnie ears? What is WRONG WITH YOU! It makes me angry, can you tell? Honestly I think when they scan your bags as you enter the parks if you're wearing any off brand merch you should be sent away to get changed and think about your life choices.

Look, I adore trip planning. Arguably more than doing the trip itself. But Fastpass + can fuck off and die for all I care. Not only does it remove the spontaneity and joy of grabbing Fastpasses as you make your way around the park, it also adds an unnecessary layer of stress to the run up time to when you finally jump on the plane when you should be enjoying yourself. And it's hugely biased in favour of those staying on Resort at Disney. Which from a business perspective, I totally get. It's very clever. And if they Disney hotels were actually any good I'd 100% be staying there myself. But why would I when I can get a perfectly nice apartment for a fraction of the cost? And because I choose to do that I'm penalised by not being able to pick up Fastpasses for the most sought after attractions and end up queueing seventy bloody minutes for Flight of Passage despite setting a series of alarms during the run up to our holiday to ensure I was online in time to nab the passes we wanted. That is just not fair and put a real downer on what should be the most exciting days counting down to take off. Lame. Bring back paper Fastpasses.

Man, everyone must have taken a shot of stupid juice on our most recent trip to Orlando because the LOITERING drove me absolutely mad. Large groups of tourists stood gormlessly crowded outside the entrances to rides, people stopping in doorways of shops and at exits to rides and shows, just stood taking up space and scratching their heads like morons figuring out where they'd like to go next. GET. OUT. OF. MY. WAY. Like I get it, the parks are big places and can be overwhelming, especially if you've never visited them before, but for god's sake find somewhere quiet and away from the literal stampede of guests trying to get their way past you. I'm surprised I didn't punch someone, it's riling me up just thinking about it.

And just the sale of alcohol in general. I know the US are pretty batshit about alcohol anyway, with the drinking age being 21 and whatever, but I've never really taken note of how difficult it is to get a bloody drink in the parks. At EPCOT our UK driver's licenses were not accepted as ID (when they have been in the past) and it was only because we had photos of our passports on a mate's phone that we were even served. So a photo of my passport is acceptable ID but a physical driver's license isn't? Madness. I'm so glad we happened to have those pics with us because it basically would have ruined our day at the park if we weren't able to drink as we were mostly there for the Food & Wine Festival. Ridiculous. The parks really need to be more forthcoming with this info (it's there in the small print if you look hard enough), especially being one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world with a lot of guests visiting from countries with more lax drinking cultures.

Let's be real, unless you're at the Magic Kingdom you really don't need to be getting a tram to the front of the park. It's just damn lazy, and actually wastes time if you're stood in a queue in the parking lot waiting for the next tram to arrive when you could get there just as quickly by walking. It's just a by product of that must-drive-everywhere American culture, but frankly it's ridiculous when you can literally see the entrance to the park from where you're standing. Unless of course you have a disability or have a million kids with you, in which case I feel you and carry on as you were.

Oh dear lord Disney - what's going on? To my knowledge Disney World is meant to have the best staff and customer service in the world, so where the hell was that this time round? Rude, clueless, unhelpful staff pretty much everywhere we went. Unsympathetic when things when wrong, useless when we needed extra help or info to be pointed in the right direction and just a general air of not giving a fuck. We were in shock at how much the quality has gone down. But not only customer services staff - the photography was abysmal too. How can you be literally paid to be a photographer if you're not able to frame a shot properly? Our Memory Maker was included in the price of our holiday so we weren't too bothered, but friends of ours visiting from France had paid extra for this and tons of their shots were unusable because of how terrible the photos were. Horrendous.

I get it - there's reasons why lockers, in theory, are a great idea. Throughput is a big one - the less time you're faffing around with your bag as you board the train the quicker the ops can fire them out and keep the queue moving. And then there's the safety side - the less loose articles the better right? But urgh, I still don't think the parks have particularly nailed this. If you're me, which I am, not taking a bag just isn't an option. I need my hairbrush, deodorant, wipes, whatever else. It's hot, I get sweaty, I don't want to feel gross. But I also don't think it's acceptable to make your guests PAY for a fucking locker every time they want to go on one of your rides. It just leaves a bitter taste in the mouth and that's not what you're after with a day out at a theme park.

But even the free ones at Universal are a faff. Mostly because people are stupid and can't figure out the mechanism despite it being written plainly in front of them, but it's also partly down to the space. They've addresses this slightly with the new Mummy lockers, but my god those Potter locker areas are hell on Earth.

Anyway, rant over. I appreciate a lot of this comes off as really bitter but I mostly mean it all in jest. Mostly. I still think you're the worst person alive if you own a couples t-shirt but let me wallow in my own pit of hatred and you do you.

Talk later xoxo,

3 comments

  1. Great blog post BUT you're so very wrong about Fastpasses+ imo. Just back from DLP and my god, trudging around getting paper fastpasses is not only laborious for a couple it must be hell for families with little ones. Doing it on the app is so much more convenient and also much better for the environment too.

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    1. Having it centralised to an app isn't the issue to be honest, it's the fact that you literally can't get passes for some attractions because of the way it's set up. I was setting alarms and sat refreshing the page for when the passes were released, but because people staying on Resort at Disney get priority they were gone before they'd even been made available to us schmoes. It's wrong.

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    2. I agree with you *to an extent* - when we were in Disneyworld for peak season in July/Aug we failed entirely to get any fastpasses for Slinky Dog & Flight of Passage. We had to queue for those. However the Fastpass system in general is still sooo much better than paper passes for the reasons above. Sure, it advantages Disney staying holidayers but it isn't so restrictive that its a bad system.

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